Apples & Pears

Once upon a time, in this part of the world, that title would have had two meanings - the literal one and the the one resulting from rhyming slang.

Rhyming slang, or as most of it was probably erroneously named - 'cockney' rhyming slang, lent a colourful slant to everyday speech back in the early parts of the last century. The article's title would have been known to mean 'stairs', with the intended meaning being a rhyme for the last word (or part word) of the slang substitute.

Whilst it has fallen out of general use, some of them occasionally turn up in the full-blown variant on some of our comedic TV shows, or dramas about the period. It can certainly be seen in films made in the 30s,40s and 50s. The added comedy in some of those earlier films (before 'real' working-class accents became the norm, after films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) was that the majority of (UK) film actors had trained RP (received pronunciation - i.e. BBC English) voices, and their attempts to sound genuinely cockney were funny in themselves. Almost like Dick van Dyke's chimney-sweep in Mary Poppins.

So let's have a short list of the common ones - no doubt others can add to this:

apples and pears - stairs

frog and toad - road

rub-a-dub - pub

trouble and strife - wife

plates 'o meat - feet

mince pies -> minces - eyes

pork pies -> porkies - lies

cobblers' awls -> cobblers - balls

There are still some in common use today, but without real reference to the original slang. One that springs to mind was a sort of shortened slang - 'berk', meaning someone who is a bit of an idiot. Although seen as something mild nowadays, its original rhyme came from Berkshire Hunt or Berkely Hunt. A similar derivation gives us a right Charlie - from Charles (Charlie) Hunt, a well-known East-end figure in the 30s.

There are many more detailed references on this subject out there - Wikipedia, for one. Some of the current links to old rhyming slang may surprise you!